For winter sports the Serbian, Montenegrin, and Albanian mountains, as well as the chief Balkan range, promise well. I believe that it was part of the plan of Bulgarian reorganisation after the war, which King Ferdinand had in his mind, to set up great winter hotels in the mountains of his kingdom. The other Balkan States could with advantage give hospitality to similar plans. Provided that security is assured—and the Balkan peasant is in my experience the gentlest-mannered kind who ever cut throats in a wholesale way at the call of a mischief-maker—visitors to the mountains of the Balkan Peninsula would find the wildness, the uncouthness of the surrounding national life, very attractive. The picturesque national costumes, the national music, wild and uncanny, the strange national dances, all add to the fascination of the savage scenery. In an age when a fog of dreary sameness comes over all the civilised world, the Balkans have a great asset in their primitivism. Theirs is not a wholly European civilisation; indeed, except in the capital cities, it is not chiefly a European civilisation. Everywhere there is a touch of the mystery, the fatalism, the desert-bred wildness of the Asiatic steppes. For centuries the hand of the Turk has been heavy on the land, and a strong stream of his blood courses still through the veins of most of the Balkan peoples. It is not the East this Balkan Peninsula, but it is not the West, nor will be for some generations.
There is yet another possible means of attracting great streams of visitors to the Balkan regions. Throughout the mountains there are numberless medicinal springs. In Serbia and Bulgaria the water of two springs is being exploited for table use, and in Bulgaria the warm medicinal springs are being developed for bathing resorts. At Sofia there are now in course of erection great public baths which will be equal to any in Europe when they are completed. In the mountains above Sofia warm springs are being utilised, and quite a large spa village has grown up. King Ferdinand, who has a fine commercial instinct whatever the failures of his war diplomacy, has done good service to his kingdom by developing its baths and springs.
The plain country of the Balkan Peninsula is but little attractive. Under the Turkish rule nearly all plantations of trees were destroyed, and a general air of desolation was maintained. Since the Turk left, cultivation and development have been on strictly utilitarian lines, and there has been little chance for gardens or woods. The eye of the voyager misses them, and misses also the sight of castles, churches, or great buildings. The dreariness of the plain is unrelieved by forests. The rivers flow sullenly along without a bordering of trees. The Thracian plain—the greater part of which has now gone back to Turkey and thus lost hope of a redemption of its really fertile soil—is in particular desolate and forbidding. But even there, and more frequently in the plain country of Bulgaria and Serbia, there is now and again a charming village in some dell with adornment of trees and gardens. The average village, however, is a collection of hovels, their roofs lying so close to the ground that they seem to be rather burrows than huts, their aspect suggesting that they are hiding themselves and their inhabitants from the eye of a possible ravager.
Desolate as this plain country is, it has its attractions at dawn and sunset in the clear colourfull air of the Balkan Peninsula; and where the hill slopes, denuded of their forests, have been covered over by a dense oak scrub the autumn aspect of the plain at sunset is incomparably lovely. The scrub, when the first of the autumn frosts come, blazes out in such scarlet and gold as cannot be imagined in the moist and soft climate of England. With the setting of the sun and the coming of the violet night the earth's carpet seems to be here smouldering, there burning, a sea of lambent fire so bright that you look to see its burgeoning reflected in the sky.
I should advise the tourist wishing to see the Balkan Peninsula at its best to choose the fall of the year for a visit. In the summer there is great heat and dust and plague of flies. In the winter travel is impossible with any comfort except along the railway lines, and the whole Peninsula is frost-bound. The spring is a beautiful season at its later end, but not at the time of the thaw.
As to the route for a voyage there are several alternatives. One may take the Oriental Express through to Constantinople and work a way up the Balkan Peninsula from there: or take train to Trieste and approach the Balkans by the Adriatic side: or, taking the Oriental Express, leave it at Bucharest and journey from there to Sofia: or, taking the Oriental Express, leave it at Belgrade, making that the starting-point for a riding trip. Certainly to enjoy the country one must leave the railways and journey on horseback or by cart over the wilder tracks. An interpreter who speaks English can be engaged in any one of the capitals. The hire of horses, oxen, and carts is very cheap, if you are properly advised by your interpreter and pay the local rates only. Forage, too, is cheap: and so is "the food of the country," i.e. bread, cheese, bacon, and goat and sheep flesh. Most civilised luxuries of food can be obtained in the capitals and bigger towns, but they are dear.
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SOFIA
General view, looking towards the Djumala Pass (45 miles away). Taken from the front of Parliament House, showing monument of Alexander II, known in Bulgaria as the "Tsar Liberator"